‘Netflix for pirates’ comes to jailbroken iOS devices

Popcorn Time, the service that allows users to stream movie torrents, today makes its debut on iOS. It’s available only to jailbroken devices — there’s no way Apple would have approved it for the App Store — and it can be obtained through Cydia via a dedicated Popcorn Time repository.

Popcorn Time has been described as “Netflix for pirates,” but while the pirated content you’ll use it to watch is illegal, the app itself is not. And because neither you or the app store the files, you’re technically doing nothing wrong when you use it to stream movies and TV shows that you haven’t paid for.

Many would argue it’s still unethical, and they’d be right, but that doesn’t seem to put too many off; Popcorn Time has become incredibly popular since it was made available on Mac and PC back in March. It has also been brought to Android since then, and the team behind Popcorn Time says around 8,000 people attempt to install that Android app on iOS devices every day.

Fortunately for them, a real iOS app is now available for jailbroken iPhones and iPads running iOS 7 or later. To download it, just add http://cydia.time4popcorn.eu to your Cydia sources, and then search for “Popcorn Time.”

Because the content you’ll watch through Popcorn Time is streamed to your device, you won’t need a great deal of free storage to use the app. You will, however, need a Wi-Fi or data connection at all times. It’s also worth noting that unlike Popcorn Time for other platforms, the iOS version doesn’t yet have VPN built in, but its developers are working on it.

You can also expect to see support for Chromecast and AirPlay streaming in a future release.